Reboot Ralph has been an unknown quantity on Disney’s slate for the past year. Announced in 2010 as a May 2013 release, the film was bumped up to November 2 2012 earlier this year. But all we really knew was the title, and the fact that it was a reworked version of an old Disney project called Joe Jump, which was about “an outdated video game character who’s been left behind by the march of technology.”

Well, Reboot Ralph has now become Wreck-It Ralph, which is now about “an arcade game Bad Guy determined to prove he can be a Good Guy.” The first cast has been announced, too: John C. Reilly, Sarah Silverman, Jack McBrayer and Jane Lynch. A few more details are after the break. Read More »

Annette Haywood-Carter, a former script supervisor who jumped to directing (Foxfire, with a young Angelina Jolie, for instance), is preparing to shoot the period drama Savannah in the Georgia town of the same name, and has secured the final pieces of the film’s cast. Jim Caviezel and Chiwetel Ejiofor have joined Bradley Whitford, Jaimie Alexander, Jack McBrayer and Hal Holbrook. Read More »

In his new book of essays, Eating the Dinosaur, pop culture critic Chuck Klosterman posits that “as a species we have never been less human than we are right now.” Part of the reason why this has happened, he says, is that our growing consumption of media, movies, and entertainment has made it so that “we can’t really differentiate between real and unreal images.” He concludes that we thus, “no longer have freedom to think whatever we want.” For instance, the words, “basketball game,” instantly trigger a mental image of the NBA before (rather than?) a memory of a real experience. The Klosterman twist is that while “reading about Animal Collective on the Internet has replaced being alive,” he’s generally okay with this cultural and social development. I should add that he admits that the Unabomber’s Manifesto and its author had several really good and scarily prescient points.

In his second interview with /Film, many of Eating the Dinosaur‘s ideas are discussed within the context of modern television series like Mad Menand 30 Rock. We also discuss the significance of the odd documentary-style used on The Office and now Modern Family, and why he believes pop-culture writing/blogging on the internet unfortunately has become “an institutional voice” that rivals academia. Is this where I type, “Hopefully the next trailer is better?” For our first interview round with Chuck Klosterman, click here. For Klosterman’s updates on film adaptations of his books Fargo Rock City and Killing Yourself to Live, click here.